


So no one told you life was gonna be this way?

by spf500



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: AU where they all work on the same tv show, Alternate Universe- TV Show, M/M, everyone is significantly less traumatized than they are in canon, half of this fic is serious, the other half is stupidity inspired by a throwaway comment in the s2 finale, the whole gang makes an appearance but just less so than those four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 19:19:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17493746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spf500/pseuds/spf500
Summary: Eliot Waugh joins the cast ofHouse of Filloryand learns that therealtv show is the friends we made along the way.





	So no one told you life was gonna be this way?

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't know anything about the television industry.
> 
> Heavily inspired by Chash's [Disney Channel You series ](https://archiveofourown.org/series/337711).

“5. Eliot Waugh: Eliot Waugh is best known for his role as the heartthrob Chad on _Brakebills U_ , a teen drama/crime thriller/makeover show. We’re looking forward to him reuniting with former castmate Margo Hanson and serving up new looks—hopefully topless ones ;)—in his recently announced role on _House of Fillory._ ”  

\- Excerpt from Buzzfeed article, “Five Reasons You Should be Watching _House of Fillory_ ”

 

* * *

 

The first day Eliot was supposed to be on set he woke up at 5 AM restless with nerves and unable to go back to sleep, which was a really positive sign for how the day was going to go. So he spent a solid hour obsessing over what to wear, finally deciding on his second-best vest—the one with bands of intricate embroidery that at first glance looked like fancy curves, but on closer inspection turned out to be tiny, interlaced “E” and “W” monograms. Classy, but not too over-the-top. For him, at least.

Eliot was tentatively looking forward to _House of Fillory,_ which had just finished its first season’s mid-season finale to generally positive reviews. It was sort of like a reality TV version of _Game of Thrones_ , with its own complicated fantasy worldbuilding about like, elves or some shit. He had absolutely watched the show before. Or at least, he’d watched some episodes. Okay, he had _meant_ to watch some episodes, but he definitely did skim the Wikipedia page. I mean, he was an _actor_ , for god’s sake. Lying was right there in the job description.

 At any rate, he was being brought on for the second half of the first season as the long-lost double-secret nephew of the king, replacing the old crown prince who had died in a tragic rat extermination-related accident. (In other words, Idri, the actor who was leaving, had been offered a higher-paying job on the CW’s thrilling new show _The Jungle,_ which reimagined _Apocalypse Now_ as taking place in a high school.) Eliot was kind of excited to be doing a new genre, but more importantly he was excited to be working again with an old friend from his child acting days, Margo Hanson. Even if his character was named “Mitcholas Vasterlay Stinius Thuringer XIV,” known to most as “Mitch,” how bad could it be?

Unfortunately, it was an Ember & Umber production, which, well. Ember and Umber, as they were known professionally, had a shockingly in-depth IMDb page considering nobody even knew their last names. The two brothers had started off working on other well-known productions, such as the TV adaptation of the _If Rams Were Gods_ book series and had done well enough that they were able to branch off and start their own company. Their directorial debut, _House of Fillory,_ was largely staffed by industry newbies. This was because, as it would later turn out, Ember and Umber were so horrendously awful to work with and just in general so batshit insane that anybody who had come into contact with them before flat-out refused to work with them. But it’s not like Eliot could have known that beforehand, seeing as this was the show that would make Ember and Umber infamous, so let’s not beat up previous selves for things they couldn’t have known, okay?

 

Though in retrospect, the fact that he had been hired at the last minute because a starring actor had quit in the middle of the season probably should have been a tip off.

 

* * *

 

Eliot steeled himself in front of the plain metal warehouse door, trying to calm his jangling nerves. He was used to first-day nerves, but mixed in with the usual anxieties was a darker thread of fear. Fear that he would see Margo again for the first time in _years_ and discover that they no longer knew each other. Back in their _Brakebills U_ days, the two of them had been inseparable, glamorous megabitches to rival Ryan and Sharpay, complete with ambiguous romantic undertones (but without the unfortunate baggage of being siblings). What if, in the intervening years, the two of them had become strangers? What if that kind of friendship was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he had ruined it?

 He took a deep breath and rubbed his sweaty palms on his trousers, then opened the door and stepped inside. The shift from the bright sunlight outside to the cool shadows of what was probably a lobby temporarily blinded him, but he could hear someone moving around.

“Eliot! I can’t believe you actually agreed to be on this fucking show!” And there, out of the darkness, walking towards him at a leisurely pace, smirk already in place, was Margo. A spike of worry went through him, for a moment not recognizing this adult woman before him. For a tense minute they were locked in a staring contest, judging each other in the way that only good friends can do. He was suddenly very aware that he was no longer the teenager he had been when they had met.

Margo was the one to break eye contact, nodding approval of what she saw. “I can’t believe you missed my twenty-first birthday party, you cock.” She broke into a genuine smile.

It was such a perfectly Margo thing to say that Eliot immediately felt more at ease. With an overwhelming rush of affection for his old friend, he scooped her up into his arms and swung her around, crying “Bambi!” She squealed in delight and then fell against him, giggling.

“God, I can’t believe you still remember that stupid nickname.”

 He stepped back to get a good look at her. Today her hair was falling around her shoulder in what could only be described as luxurious brown curls, and she was wearing a simple white lacy blouse over tight leather pants, as well as some truly gravity-defying heels. He felt almost overdressed.

He beamed down at her. “You haven’t changed at all. Well, except for some new wrinkles in your old age,” he teased. She frowned playfully back up at him.

“Hey, at least my fashion sense has improved with age.” She squinted up at him. “Ugh, I forgot how fucking tall you are. My neck already hurts. Come one,” she grabbed his hand, “I’m supposed to show you around.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Straight to business? You have changed since I last saw you.”

She glared at him, mock offended. “Hey, don’t complain. I volunteered for this gig. In fact, you should count yourself lucky that you didn’t get fucking, _Todd_. I’m saving your ass here. As per always.”

“I will consider myself forever in your debt. Onwards, king Bambi!”

 

* * *

 

He and Margo spent the next half hour amiably catching up while walking around set. She pointed out the important locations (cleanest bathroom with the best lighting for mirror selfies, quickest path outside for a smoke break, the weird smelling practice room to avoid at all cost, etc.) and introduced him to some of the crew. One of the first stops was hair and makeup so Margo could pick up an eyepatch she had left there.

She led him around the corner and through a door to a relatively small, but very brightly lit room. One wall was devoted to mirrors over very cluttered counters; the other had, Eliot noted, a weird combination of David Bowie posters and movie posters involving werewolves. Sitting in a chair and fiddling with his phone was a young-ish guy wearing glasses and a plaid shirt who wouldn’t have looked out of place in a hipster café or a weed dispensary.

Margo snapped her fingers in front of his face to get his attention. “Hey. Hoberman. I want my eyepatch. Also, this is Eliot.”

Josh stood up and stretched, grinning. Properly warmed up for dramatics, he flung his arms out wide. “Dude! Welcome to my kingdom! Josh Hoberman, makeup artist extraordinaire and culinary genius on the side, at your service.”

 “Hey, nice to meet you too. I’m Eliot.”

Josh seemed like an affable, easily cheerful kind of guy, which was a refreshing break from most of the actors Eliot knew. They talked amiably for a few minutes while Margo stomped around the room, rummaging through drawers and piles of hair extensions and brightly-colored wigs, adding commentary as she saw fit. They were just starting to get into a heated debate about the merits of lip scrubs (“Unnecessary,” according to Eliot. “Just make your own,” was Margo’s opinion, and “tasty,” said Josh,) when the first actual adult Eliot had seen so far walked into the room. He looked to be in his fifties, about average height, and exuded a sort of serious authority and just general adult competence.

“Ah, good. I see you’ve found our newest addition, Ms. Hanson.”

_Damn._ Eliot was immediately struck the newcomer’s deep, rich voice. _If this guy doesn’t already have an ASMR channel, he should._

“Mr. Waugh, I presume? I am Henry Fogg, the assistant director. We’re so glad you could join us.” The man held out his hand to Eliot, who gave his best firm handshake. Gotta make a good impression. “Any questions?” Eliot opened his mouth, thinking about twenty thoughts at once, but Fogg was already moving on. “Good. As it’s your first day, we’ll try to go easy on you, but we have a tight schedule. Today is just going to be rehearsals, but we start filming tomorrow. I’ll see you in five.” He turned, then paused. “And put that eyepatch on before you go to costuming, Ms. Hanson.” With that he briskly walked right back out the door. Eliot turned to Margo, a little shell-shocked.

“Is he… is he always like that?”

“Only before lunch.”

“What happens at lunch?”

“He shotguns half a bottle of brandy.”

 

* * *

 

Margo fixed her plain black eyepatch on as they were walking, complaining terribly the whole time while Eliot tried to hold back his laughter (“Stop laughing, I can’t fucking see, El!”). It was nice, but a little awkward; the two of them were still trying to figure out how the adult versions of themselves fit together.

Suddenly a stringy guy with a mop of black hair appeared out of nowhere, interrupting Eliot’s brooding. He looked, as Margo would later say, “like a store-brand version of you.”

 “I think the eyepatch looks good on you, Margo!” This guy was far too chipper for this early in the morning. “I’m really digging the one-eyed look.”

“Fucking _Todd,”_ hissed Margo under her breath, then stopped.

Eliot could almost see the moment when she realized the opportunity she had here. Her uncovered eye widened slightly, and she flashed a grin at Eliot—a grin he was very familiar with—before turning slowly to face Todd.

“Todd,” said Margo in a dangerously sweet voice. “That’s soooo sweet of you. Men _never_ tell me I’m pretty once they realize I only have one eye.”

“Haha yeah, and girls always freak when I tell them I have dentures.” Todd chuckled at his own joke, then trailed off weakly as no one joined him, looking from Margo to Eliot in growing alarm and confusion. “Um, guys?”

 “Did you not know, Todd? I’ve had a fake glass eye _this entire time_. But it got infected, so I had to take it out.”

“It’s true,” Eliot nodded gravely. “I’ve known Margo since high school. I was there when she lost her eye.”

Margo looked off into the distance and sighed. “It was a tragic accident...”

“Wh-wait, what? Are you messing with me? You, you don’t act like you’re missing an eye?”

Margo put her hand to her chest, offended. “Oh, so now _you_ decide whose pain is real and whose isn’t? Do I not seem trustworthy? I’m hurt, Todd.”

“Wounded, even,” added in Eliot.

Todd, who had been getting progressively more and more flustered, looked like his flight or fight response had been triggered. Flight was currently winning. “No, nono, that’s not what I meant, I mean, I’m sorry?”

“Do you need proof? Do you want to see the open, oozing sore?” Margo started lifting the corner of her eyepatch.

Todd blanched. “Nope! No, you’re right, I should just take your word for it, and, and I’m gonna leave now.” He fled through a nearby doorway.

They just barely managed to wait for him to leave before they burst into gales of laughter.

“Did you see his face?”

“He was practically shitting himself!”

They paused for a moment, looked at each other, and then broke into fresh peals of laughter— partially at Todd, but also partially just in delight at the discovery that they still had it. The megabitches were back.

 

* * *

 

Five minutes later and Margo had steered him to a soundstage that had been built to look like the interior of a castle. It was your average stock fantasy castle, complete with gray stonework and fancy gold-painted throne.

“Okay, baby, this is where I leave you. I gotta go to costumes.” Margo got up on her tiptoes to peck him on the cheek. “I’ll come find you after, okay? We can all go get drinks and bond via bitchy commentary.”

Eliot felt a pang of loss and anxiety as he watched her long hair swish around the corner. It was the first time all day that he had been left alone, and he missed Margo’s steadying presence and cool confidence. For a moment, he let himself get lost in the nervousness. _What if I fuck up? What if they all hate me? What if I was never actually hired and they’re all too nice to tell me to leave so they’re just dropping hints and hoping I’ll pick up on them soon?_

Okay, so the last one might be a little far-fetched. But still.

Thankfully, at that moment Fogg walked into the room, followed by four women who were varying degrees of awake and annoyed. Eliot did his best to look aloof and like the confident industry professional he was. Fogg clapped his hands together.

“Okay everyone, this is Eliot Waugh, who will be joining us as the newly discovered prince. He-” Fogg was abruptly cut off by the sound of Smash Mouth’s “All Star” coming from his pocket. He pulled out his phone, looked at the screen, and sighed resignedly. “I have to take this. You can spend the next few minutes getting to know each other, but then we need to get to work. Ember and Umber are going to be on set tomorrow, so I want us to be rock solid.” Fogg turned his back to them, already talking quietly into his phone as he walked away. “Yes, he’s here. _Yes,_ we have enough clocks on set. No, Jesus, we don’t need-”

“Hi!” Said someone, sticking their hand into Eliot’s line of sight. “I’m Julia Wicker, a.k.a. the Crown Princess Trinnia, a.k.a your new sister.” Eliot took the hand, looking up at its owner and finding a woman with long dark hair smiling back at him. She seemed familiar, and after a couple of seconds squinting at her, he remembered.

“Oh, you worked with Margo a few years back, on that show about dog walkers, right?” 

“Yeah! You know, she’s been trying to hide it, but I think she’s really excited that you decided to join the cast.” Julia seemed nice enough, though the small tattoos on her fingers earned her a spot under the ‘do not fuck with because she has the pain tolerance of a professional wrestler’ category.

Eliot was introduced to the other three in short order: Alice (surprise second-act villain and terrifyingly competent), Fen (Julia’s Lady-in-waiting and absolute sweetheart), and Kady (A royal guard. “I’m actually mostly a stunt actress, but I broke, like, four ribs a while back so I my manager forced me to take a break. Sometimes I get to hit things with a sword though, so that’s cool.”)

Eliot and Julia were busy comparing notes on working with Margo—Eliot was discovering that he and Julia had the same sort of dark humor and cynical outlook on life—when Fogg, once again, walked in and immediately ended the conversation.

“Let’s get down to business. Tomorrow is going to be very demanding, so we need to work hard today.”

 

* * *

 

Margo was standing outside the set after they had finished up for the day.

“Hey Eliot, congrats on surviving.” Then, glancing around at the others, “I was thinking we should all get a drink. Who’s in?”

Fen had to go pick up her niece, while Kady begged out on grounds of ‘actually having a life outside of work, losers.’ Alice just shook her head somberly. Julia however, said she would and that maybe her friend who worked on the scripts would join, and pulled out her phone to text him.

Margo settled back onto the wall to wait, looking up at Eliot. “So? How was your first day?”

“It really wasn’t that bad,” he mused. “I don’t know what you were going on about with all those dire warnings, though. Fogg was pretty critical, sure, but he’s just doing his job.”

“Still a kiss-ass, I see,” remarked Margo, eyes twinkling.

“Shut up,” he groaned, elbowing her in the ribs. “I will say, this is not the best material I’ve ever had to work with.” He paged through his script. “I mean, ‘The welcome your gracious family has bestowed upon one so humble as I has been felt in my soul’ ? Who writes this shit?”

Someone out of his line of vision let out a long-suffering sigh. “That would be me.” Eliot whipped around, unsure if he wanted to be apologetic or not. (He snuck a glance at Margo, just in case. She was too busy laughing at him to be of any help.) Behind him was a guy probably a few years younger than him, with shoulder-length brown hair that partially hid his face and the posture of the perpetually nervous. Against his better judgement, Eliot couldn’t help noticing that this guy was kind of cute.

“Q! I was just about to text you,” cried out Julia happily, slinging an arm around the newcomer’s shoulders. “Come meet my long-lost baby brother!” She gestured vaguely in Eliot’s direction. “Quentin, this is Eliot, our newest cast member. Eliot, this is Quentin Coldwater, he’s one of the writers.”

Quentin gave a little wave and smile that scrunched up the corners of his eyes adorably. You know, objectively speaking. “Welcome to the shitshow, Julia’s secret brother.”

“Quentin,” said Julia proudly, “Got me this job. He’s the guy who came up with most of the worldbuilding and backstory for this show, you know.” Quentin mumbled something that might have been an “you’re exaggerating” and ducked his head, blushing.

“Hey Quentin, wanna come with us?” Margo pushed off the wall and started fussing with her bag, getting ready to leave. “we’re going to the bar to gripe and let Eliot know what he’s gotten himself into, since he has apparently never watched the show starring his childhood best friend.”

Eliot spluttered. “Hey, I watched, like a _couple_ episodes. And you, know, the writing wasn’t that bad, really, I mean, I was just exaggerating earlier, I’m sure you’ve worked really hard on this show, Quentin,”

Margo rolled her eyes at his flailing and grabbed Eliot’s wrist in one hand and Quentin’s in the other, Julia happily bringing up the rear. “Come on. You can flirt in the bar. Where there is alcohol.” Quentin blushed even more at this, and Eliot momentarily fell silent.

 

* * *

 

Once they were safely settled in a booth, Eliot was left alone with Quentin while Margo and Julia went to get drinks.

“I really am sorry about my comment earlier. I’m sure you give your all to the script,” Eliot began earnestly. It was never good to start off a friendship with ungrounded insults, though in retrospect that had worked out pretty well for him and Margo.

Quentin waved off the rest of his apology. “Nah, it’s fine. Ember and Umber have some truly stupid plot ideas, so I’ve already given up trying to actually write well. Honestly, at this point I’m just writing pure bullshit to see what I can get away with.”

Julia came back, placing four drinks on the table. Margo followed up with what looked like a basket of Olive Garden breadsticks.

“And that, Eliot,” Margo pointed at him, “Is the exact right attitude to have to this job. It’s that, or go insane.”

“Or end up like Fogg: bitter and day-drinking,” added Quentin.

 Eliot frowned. Margo, he knew liked to exaggerate, but Quentin seemed a bit more grounded than that. “Oh, come on, it can’t really be that bad,” he said with a note of pleading in his voice, looking around the table at the other three. Margo just shrugged, made a “you’ll believe me eventually” face, and grabbed for a breadstick. Julia raised her hands in a ‘don’t look at me’ gesture.

“I’m not gonna complain, this is paying for law school three times over—I love this gig. Besides, Ember and Umber aren’t that bad all the time.”

“Yeah, but Jules,” interjected Quentin. “when they’re bad, they’re _bad._ I mean, do you remember the shit they came up with when Idri decided to leave?” ‘Idri is quitting. Have an evil witch turn him into a rat.’” Quentin did a fairly terrible impression of Ember (or Umber?) “I mean, what the fuck was I supposed to do with that? I had to convince them that a tragic accident would be easier to write in than an entirely new plot and inventing an antagonist whole cloth. And even then they were still fixated on the goddamn rat idea.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot about that.”

“One time,” Margo added, “Umber literally said ‘Don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee’ to me. Who even says that in real life? And don’t even get me started on how they contradict each other.” She paused. “Actually, I’m gonna get into that anyways.” She took a swig of her drink. “Okay, so, on one side, you got, goddamn Ember who just keeps yelling ‘This is boring! We need more drama!’” Margo was waving her drink around in the air, the liquid sloshing dangerously. “And then on the other, you have fucking, UMBER, who fixates on, like, whether it would be historically accurate to his _made-up_ shitty _fantasy world_ for the characters to be wearing nylon tights. And neither of them- NEITHER of them, has a clue in HELL on how to tell a coherent goddamn story.” She concluded by banging her drink back down on the table, spilling liquid over the sides.

 

* * *

 

Two drinks later and Margo and Julia had disappeared off to the bathroom, leaving Eliot alone with Quentin again. Basic pleasantries were exhausted pretty quickly; Quentin didn’t seem too comfortable answering questions about himself and would mostly just say something vague and non-committal. Casting around for topics of conversation, Eliot realized this was the perfect time to finally figure out what the fuck _House of Fillory_ was even about.

“Look, I may not have, uh, really watched the show that…religiously before. Could you give me a rundown on the whole-” he wiggled his fingers, trying his best to communicate the concept of historic-political context- “Fillory deal? Like…all the backstory and worldbuilding and shit.”

“Oh, okay, yeah!” Quentin’s eyes lit up—clearly he was more comfortable talking about this. Eliot tried not to find it cute. (He failed.) “So I was, uh, inspired by a lot of the fantasy books I read when I was li- when I was a kid. Do you know um, _The Chronicles of Narnia_?”

“I…may have read the Wikipedia page once.”

“ _The Magician of Earthsea_?”

“Nope.”

“…what about _The Lord of the Rings_?”

“Oh yeah. I definitely watched those movies.” (He absolutely had not.)

“Okay, so, you know how Tolkien sets up all this, like, extended family drama in _The Silmarillion_?”

“The, what?”

“The Silmarillion? All the creation myths for Middle Earth and the Elvish history and stuff?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Oh.” Quentin deflated a bit. “Well, it’s really interesting, because, you know, Tolkien was a Medievalist and he used all this knowledge to create this ridiculously detailed fantasy world, which is really pretty cool, and-”

Eliot was enjoying Quentin’s little nerd-out, but also he really didn’t care about Tolkien and this tangent threatened to meander on for at least ten minutes. “Quentin,” he interrupted as gently as possible, “This is fascinating, and all, but could you, maybe, uh, skip to the point?”

Quentin grinned embarrassedly. “Right, sorry, sometimes I get a little distracted. Um, anyways, so Tolkien created this whole extended mythology which I used as inspiration for Fillory…”

Eliot nodded along, mesmerized by Quentin’s hand gestures. _He’s surprisingly eloquent once you get him onto a subject he cares about_ , Eliot realized.

Quentin kept going until Margo and Julia reappeared, at which point they joined in on the attempt to get Eliot up to speed. It was, in all honesty, a really good night. Eliot left feeling—against everyone’s dire warnings—that this job might actually be fun.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The next day was, to paraphrase Fogg, a bitch.

It started well enough—Eliot spent a while hanging out with Margo and Josh, getting his makeup done, and he got fitted for a truly magnificent one-shouldered embroidered crimson cape. When they finally walked onto the set Fogg was already there, overseeing the camera guy setting up.

“Hey Penny,” shouted Margo, “This is Eliot. Try to shoot him on the left-side profile, it’s his best angle.” Then, in an aside: “I’m always looking out for you, babe.”

He placed a kiss on the top of her head. “I know.” Margo knew what the important things were in life, and that was why he loved her.

The camera guy—Penny? Did he hear that right? —barely looked up from his work but still managed to point his hand in the right direction to flip Margo off.

“You two!” (Fogg hand noticed their arrival) “As long as you’re here run through your lines or practice blocking instead of distracting the crew. Penny, could you try mounting the camera over by the door instead?”

Penny scowled and started lugging his equipment towards the door. Unluckily for Penny, it was at that exact moment that the door crashed open and two men entered.

“Wha-shit!” he cursed as he fumbled with his camera, only just managing to keep it from hitting the floor by going into a sort of lunge and then toppling over onto his ass.

“HELLO MORTALS,” boomed an unctuous voice. Never before in his life had Eliot felt the need to use the word ‘unctuous,’ but desperate times call for desperate measures. The man attached to the voice was largely unremarkable; he had a scraggly brown beard and a potbelly. His clothes however, were a different story: he was wearing a bejeweled magenta track suit that read ‘JUICY’ down the sides. Eliot fought down the urge to vomit. God, velour should be _banned_.  

“ARE YOU GL- oh, this one is bowing to me! Umber, look, I’ve got supplicants!” Ember—for if the other man was Umber, then this one was Ember- had just noticed Penny at his feet.

“I believe he fell over, brother,” said Umber dryly. Umber looked fairly normal, at least in contrast to his brother. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and was wearing a cardigan over a plaid button-down, and for all the world looked like an architect. Eliot fervently hoped that he was as boring as his boating shoes. Ten seconds of Ember and he was starting to see what everyone else had been talking about.

Ember began a retort, but Fogg interceded with the deftness of an employee who had too often been caught in the middle of an argument between supervisors. “Ah, Ember, Umber, we’ve been waiting for you. This is the new actor you hired to replace Idri, Eliot Waugh.” Fogg grabbed Eliot’s elbow and pulled him out of the gaggle of actors. Ember trotted towards them as Umber followed at a more stately pace.

“Excellent!” he crowed, clapping his hands together. “This calls for a celebration,” Ember paused, apparently thinking hard. “If only I had some of those little cakes…Oh, Fray! Fray! Where is that intern?” Ember looked around, then made a beeline for a young girl with curly hair and a deeply dissatisfied expression standing in the doorway.

“Don’t mind my brother, Mr. Waugh,” Umber leaned in to shake his hand. “We’re so glad you could join us on such short notice.”

“Oh, I was happy too,” said Eliot, relieved to be back on familiar ground.

“I hope you enjoy your time-” Umber stopped abruptly, distracted by something behind Eliot. His eyes took on a manic gleam. “I’m sorry, but those tapestries are out of alignment. I have to go deal with that situation immediately. FOGG! I CLEARLY SAID THAT THE TAPESTRIES SHOULD BE SPACED EXACTLY 4 ½ INCHES APART.”

Eliot let his hand drop. There went his hopes of Umber being normal.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day went pretty much in the same vein: Ember would swoop in, make ridiculous demands, then get distracted and leave again. Umber, in contrast, would fixate on tiny details until things were perfectly in order. Both of them were constantly stopping the actors in mid-scene to correct or adjust one thing or the other, until Eliot thought he would scream if he had to say, “Good evening, my royal sister,” one more goddamn time. Even Quentin was roped into the act, because Ember and Umber wanted him on hand to adjust the script as they arbitrarily decided to rewrite or just trash entire scenes.

Eliot almost cried with relief when the day was finally over. He could feel the beginning of a headache and really just wanted to go home and crash on his bed. Margo, however, had other ideas.

“Alright bitches, let’s get out of here. I was thinking Chinese this time?”

Julia, who had already pulled out her phone to look up Chinese restaurants on yelp, looked over at Quentin. “Q, you’re closest, can we go to your place?”

Eliot’s confusion must have shown on his face, because Margo walked over to take his arm. “Tradition. Whenever the You-Know-Who-Times-Two come on set we all go and drown our sorrows in greasy takeaway food. You’re coming.”

“But Bambi,” whined Eliot, “I have a headache.”

“Good thing Chinese food is the cure for that. Ovary up, El!”

Eliot considered pushing it further—he knew that Margo wouldn’t actually force him to stick around, and he really did want to go home—but his desire to get to know his coworkers a little more outweighed his desire to go home. It’s not like he would ever pass up an opportunity to socialize, anyways. If he went home now no one would be around to hear him complain dramatically, which would be a tragedy.

“Fine,” he sighed, and he let Margo drag him out into the sharp winter air.

 

* * *

 

Quentin’s apartment was small, but relatively nice. The main room was a living room area leading into a kitchen; it was dominated by a sagging couch and two doors led to what were presumably the bathroom and bedroom. On the one hand, it was definitely not as messy as Eliot had expected. On the other, it was exactly as geeky as he would have predicted. Books of all kinds were strewn around the room, and a variety of board games littered the shelf and coffee table. There were even various Harry Potter Lego characters scattered throughout the room, in unlikely places such as on top of the door frame and inside the pot of a half-dead plant. It was all oddly endearing.

Quentin disappeared back into his kitchen, while Kady, Julia, and Margo sat down on the couch and huddled around Julia’s phone screen, looking up menus.

Julia immediately took charge. Eliot would have expected Margo to be the boss, but then he reasoned that Julia was probably more organized and also more willing to actually take out her phone to google things.

“Okay, so does anyone have any preferences as to which restaurant to order from? There’s…” Julia checked her phone, “three in the area.

The four of them looked at each other, blank faced. Nobody wanted to be the one to make a decision.

“I guess, whichever is cheapest?” said Kady at the same time that Margo said, “the one with the highest rating.”

Eliot could tell that this was going to devolve into an argument and he was absolutely not about to get dragged into that, so he wandered into the kitchen with the vague idea of getting a drink.

“I think it might be midnight before we actually place an order-” he started to say, but cut himself upon seeing what Quentin was doing. It looked, for all the world, like he was about to make hot chocolate with _water._

“Quentin Coldwater!” cried Eliot. “What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

Quentin jumped, looking in alarm at Eliot. “Making…hot chocolate???”

“With _water?”_

Quentin relaxed, looking nonplussed. “Yeah, it’s a perfectly normal thing to do? Did you really need to give me a heart attack about it?”

Eliot pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed dramatically. “Oh, Q, Q, Q. How have you gotten this far in life without me? Hot chocolate should only be made with _milk_.”

“…It’s really not that big a deal, El. There’s no milk in fridge, and water basically does the same thing, so,” he shrugged, and moved towards the microwave. Eliot moved to block his way.

“Uh-uh. Nope. That is just…heresy. Heresy is what that is. Milk adds to the body and creates a richness that water can only _dream_ of achieving.”

Quentin just stared at him, unimpressed.

“If you wait five minutes I’ll go out and buy some milk.”

“Gee,” Quentin raised an eyebrow, “my hero.”

“I know,” agreed Eliot sagely. “The things I do for love.”

 

* * *

 

Over the next few weeks Eliot settled into his new routine. While Margo, Julia, and Quentin, had, in fact, not been lying about how awful Ember and Umber were, Eliot found that the fun he had on set made up for their occasional intrusions. If nothing else, getting to act with Margo again was a blessing in of itself. Letting their relationship quietly fall by the wayside was, he realized, one of the biggest mistakes of his life. And he actually _liked_ his other castmates. Julia was sharp and witty, Kady grounded but always down for shit, and Fen an inveterate optimist. Even Alice, who had seemed unapproachable at first, was helpful. (And more importantly, a great person to mumble snide comments to. Mutual hatred of another person truly was the foundation of a lasting friendship.) He was actually having, dare he say it, fun.

Even though they arguably should have had the least amount of contact, Eliot ended up spending quite a lot of time with Quentin. At first it was mostly by coincidence, since they would both be waiting around for Margo and Julia to finish filming a scene together, or Eliot had had a script issue, or apparently when Quentin got overwhelmed he would sit outside in the same grey corner of the parking lot where Eliot smoked. It was just coincidence. A mere accident of fate. Really. Eliot absolutely had not memorized Quentin’s schedule and started timing his breaks for the best chance to run into him.

It was nice, hanging out with Quentin. He was a good listener and had a wry sense of humor that delighted and surprised Eliot every time. He was also almost painfully earnest about the things that he loved, and possibly one of the most genuine and sincere people Eliot had ever met. Somehow he always found himself wanting to spill his guts to Quentin; Eliot had always made friends quickly and was, in fact, a bit of an overshare-r, so it’s not like this was new to him. But this time it felt different.

Eliot was, possibly, completely fucking gone for him.

 

* * *

 

One sunny day he went to his usual spot to smoke and found Quentin already huddled on the bench, reading a book. Eliot chuckled to himself. Only Quentin would bring an actual, physical book to work. The goddamn nerd, he thought fondly as he slid onto the bench.

“God, I love a workplace where ‘I need a smoke’ counts as a legitimate reason to take a break.” He leaned over Quentin’s shoulder, trying to look at his book. “What are you reading?”

Quentin looked up, giving him a little grin that made Eliot’s stomach flutter. “Hm? Oh, it’s just some old Greek myths I had in my bag. Umber came into the writers’ room to try and convince someone to edit the screenplay for his adaptation of “Atlas Shrugged” so I left as fast as I could.”

“Hm. Wise choice. Personally, I’m avoiding Ember’s attempts to turn episode nine into an extended interpretive dance number.” Eliot took a drag on his cigarette. “Be an actor, they said. Have fame and glory and riches, they said.”

Quentin shuddered. “Better you than me.”

“Hey, I’d take fucking around and saying bullshit in front of a camera over, ugh, _writing_ any day. I would literally die. How do you stand it?”

Quentin rolled his eyes at Eliot’s dramatics. “I’m a martyr for my craft.” He paused for a few seconds, eyes distant and thoughtful. “But—really, I love it. I…wasn’t the happiest kid, you know? But I loved reading, I loved fantasy books. They were an escape but also…they gave me something to hold onto. Something to hope for, a, a, promise that life would get better.” He smiled to himself, then continued.

“And then like every other kid who likes to read, I wanted to write, too. I probably would have stopped, but Julies- well, she was great. Always my biggest fan.”

Quentin finally looked at Eliot, nervous but at the same time defiant. “It’s a really powerful feeling, you know, creating worlds. It’s a magic all its own—out there, in the real world, I’m just another depressed super nerd. But here? I’m a magician, you know? I don’t have to be just myself anymore. It…takes me out of myself” He faltered and stopped.

Oddly enough, Eliot did know. Acting, creating something new, was its own kind of magic. Harnessing the energy of the world to create something bigger. Hearing someone else put it into words was like feeling that last puzzle piece click into place. Quentin glanced over at Eliot, smiling embarrassedly, apparently taking Eliot’s silence for disinterest. “Sorry, I know you were just joking around, I didn’t mean to dump-“

God, it killed him, that Quentin could just reach out and put so much of his life into a new perspective, and then still feel the need to _apologize_.

“Hey,” he said gently. “Don’t be. I feel the same way too, I think. It’s about…being part of something bigger, yeah?”

Quentin relaxed, this time giving him a real smile. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly it.”

They spent the next few minutes in a companionable silence, broken only by the sound of Quentin turning a page or Eliot blowing out a particularly loud breath. Eliot stretched out his legs and took in the peace, enjoying the sun. Between that and the weeds coming up through the cracks in the asphalt, you could almost imagine that you were actually in nature.

He finally broke the silence after he finished his cigarette and looked back over at Quentin’s book. There were illustrations in it, he noted. As is right and proper. (Eliot felt strongly that all books should have pictures and that ones without were not worth his time.) This one appeared to be an illustration of the sky and the earth fucking.

“That’s some kinky shit. I thought you said this was mythology?”

Quentin laughed, a cheerful sound that seemed to make the air around it golden and JESUS, he was in deep. “It’s the creation myth—you know, Gaia and Uranus?” Eliot sniggered a bit here. “Shut up, what are you, thirteen? Anyways, they give birth to the Titans, the gods who come before the Olympians.” Eliot must have looked blank, because Quentin continued. “You know, like Zeus and stuff?”

“Ooooh, him. I always thought that the Hercules movie made that stuff up.”

Quentin blinked up at him in shock. “Did they…did they not teach that in your school?”

“Well, I spent most of my high school years on a set, remember? That’s how Margo and I met. The education we got was sort of…scattered sometimes.” Eliot took a breath here, weighing his options. This was not a topic he liked to think about, much less talk about. _But,_ he thought, _fair’s fair._

“But even before that, I didn’t…always have the best educational experience.” He stopped, steeling himself, and then he let it all out in a rush of words. “Here’s something most people except Margo don’t know about me: I grew up on a farm in rural Indiana.” Quentin frowned, looking a little confused. Eliot soldiered grimly on.

“I fucking hated it. Honestly? If I hadn’t gotten out when I did? I don’t think I would have made it to eighteen. God, being an actor was _easy_ , after spending a lifetime pretending to be someone else. Stupid as it sounds, but _Brakebills U_ saved my life. It got me out of that town, it put Margo in my life…it let me become who I am.”  Now it was Eliot staring out into the parking lot unseeingly, his fists clenched on the edge of the bench.

Quentin touched his hand softly. “Hey…Eliot. I’m really sorry you had to go through that.” Eliot looked down, blinking, at Quentin smiling sadly up at him.

“Me too.” He chuckled wryly. “You know, I used to hate myself. Hate that I pretended to be someone else for so long. But now…I don’t know. It’s kind of like that kid is still there, desperate for love and acceptance from the adults who can’t give it to him. But I’m an adult now, and I can give that to myself. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah…yeah, it does. Thanks for telling me that.”

Eliot let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding. It was…nice, actually, to talk to someone about this. It felt good, to realize how far he had come. “It was really bad for a while there, but I’ve made it this far. Might as well keep going.”

They were quiet for a beat.

Quentin bumped his shoulder against Eliot’s, smiling. “I’m glad you’re here now.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Eliot smiled back.

 

* * *

 

By the time they reached episode ten everyone was starting to go a little slap-happy. They were getting into the endgame of a truly sleep-inducing subplot about a neighboring country’s ongoing goat crisis and the only way to get through it was to stop taking anything seriously.

This particular morning Fray had popped into the dressing room to deliver scripts with new changes or corrections, as well as to look disparagingly at all of them. Fray really was amazingly supercilious for an intern, Eliot was realizing.

Eliot and Julia were doing a run through for a new scene they had just been handed where they discussed the political situation with the foreign ambassadors. He was half-heartedly reading out his lines, mostly on autopilot, bored out of his mind by this deathly dry scene.

“Okay, so then I say, ‘Hail and well met, Sir Ingens Richard Erecctus. I-‘” Eliot stopped dead. “Wait, _Richard Erecctus_? Does yours say that too?”

Julia quickly rifled through her script. “Oh my god. It _does._ Q must be fucking with us.” She squinted at her paper for a moment. “And _ingens_ is ‘huge’ in Latin.” Julia put on a falsetto voice and dipped into a graceful curtsy. “Why don’t we move further into my… _inner chambers_ , Sir Erecctus. I urge you, come.”

Eliot snickered. “Hail and well met, Sir Big Dick Erecctus.”

“Please, Sir Big Dick Erecctus is my father. Call me Lil’ Dickie.”

This was of course HIGHLY amusing, so they kept going until they were both laughing too much to talk.

“I can’t believe—we’re so fucking, juvenile,” Eliot gasped through his laugher, clutching at Julia’s shoulder for support.

Fray bustled back over, looking disdainful. “You should know that-” she stopped, apparently distracted by their flushed and red faces. “…What’s wrong with you two?” Julia and Eliot tried to straighten up and project a calm and professional manner, but Fray saw through their façade straight away. It probably had something to do with the fact that they couldn’t stop breaking into giggles whenever they looked at each other.

Eliot managed to look her in the eye and say “We just got to the part about Sir Ingens Richard Erecctus

Fray looked back at them stiffly. “I have no idea why that’s funny.”

“Oh, we just love Dick, our new friend, is all,” said Eliot, completely straight-faced.

Fray was turning red with embarrassment and anger. “Well, _some_ of us don’t spend all of our time with our minds in the gutter, unlike you two. Anyways, as I was trying to tell you-”

“Hang on,” Julia, who had gotten distracted by something in her script, cut Fray off. “One of the delegates is named Luna Selene—that’s just, that’s just Moon in two different languages. This guy is named Moon Moon!”

At this point they both _howled_ with laughter.

“What? What’s so funny?” Fray looked quickly back and forth between the two of them.

 Eliot managed to catch his breath long enough to glance up and say:

“Oh shit, who brought fucking Moon Moon?”

He and Julia broke into fresh peals of laughter, which just made Fray even more frustrated.

“What are you talking about!”

Julia wiped her eyes, face red and flushed. “You know, the meme about the wolf name generator?”

Fray just looked back blankly. Suddenly, something occurred to Eliot. Something terrible.

 “…Fray, what year were you born?”

She let out a gusty sigh and rolled her eyes. “2000.”

Eliot recoiled in horror. “You were born in the _year 2000?_ How are you allowed to work here? Are you even allowed to leave home without a parent?”

Fray crossed her arms. “I’m _nineteen_ , actually, so fuck you.”

Eliot turned to look at Julia, in shock. “Did you hear what she said? She was born in _2000_ and she’s _nineteen._ ”

“Jesus Christ, Fray” said Julia. “Shouldn’t you still be in middle school or something?”

“Whatever,” Fray tossed her hair, clearly done with this line of questioning. “You won’t be laughing so much in fifteen minutes.” She paused for effect.

“When you’re supposed to be on set and ready to film. Which is what I was _trying_ to tell you earlier.”

That shut them up real fast.

 

* * *

 

All things considered, life was going pretty well for Eliot. He was settling in, making friends, gradually upping his flirting with Quentin—that is, until he discovered that Quentin and Alice used to date. Which wasn’t a problem in of itself, it was just the realization that came with it.

It was a Friday night and Eliot was a little late getting to the bar. By the time he got there everybody else seemed to be deeply engrossed in an intense dart-off between Alice and Julia. (Unsurprisingly, Alice had terrifyingly good aim.) Everyone, he realized, except Quentin, who was sitting in a booth by himself. Eliot made a beeline for him and slid into the seat opposite Quentin. On the table there was already a pitcher of something and various abandoned cups, as well as a bowl of guava candies which looked suspiciously like they had been stolen from the nearby Chinese restaurant. Quentin, seeing him eyeing the bowl, quirked a corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, I’ve stopped trying to ask Margo where she gets this stuff.”

Eliot shrugged and grabbed one. “So, Q, what are you doing back here, all by yourself? Get into a fight with Julia? Waiting for a special someone?” He raised an eyebrow suggestively.

Quentin chuckled, ducking his head down so his hair fell over his face. “No, I’m just avoiding Alice.”

Eliot frowned. “Well, I know she can be a bit intense sometimes, but so can Julia. And Margo. And literally everybody else we work with, except maybe Fen, and she makes knives as a hobby.”

“Oh- no, wait, did you not know?” Quentin stared at him.

Eliot stared back. “…know, what? I can’t read minds, Quentin.”

“Alice and I were a thing, we, uh, we dated, a while back. It…didn’t end great. So now I try to, um, keep out of her way.” Quentin looked at him warily, waiting to see how he would react. Eliot was…unsure how he felt about this. ‘Not great’ was definitely up there. Quentin? And Alice? Really?

“You, and _Alice?_ Really? I have a hard time seeing that.”

Quentin huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, well. There was a reason it didn’t last.”

Eliot’s mind felt like it was in overdrive. _Quentin_ had dated _Alice?_ What the fuck was he supposed to do with this information? He realized that they were broken up and therefore not an issue for his ridiculous crush, but STILL. QUENTIN and ALICE.

He needed more information. And being the nosy bitch that he was, he had no compunction about pushing Q for more.

“So, like…what happened there? I mean, if you feel comfortable about it.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “Come on. Like I can turn down the chance to talk about my emotions. Anyways. Well, hm. So…we actually met through Julia, they were classmates. It was, okay at the beginning. I think probably neither of us were really the right person for the other, but we had fun at first. Except then I started, I had a, a bad time. Well. You know, I’m like, depressed, and sometimes I’m super depressed, and that was one of those times. And Alice…Alice didn’t really know how to deal with that. She tried! She really did try to be there for me, except, I just, just couldn’t function, and I was just miserable to be around. She couldn’t handle it, and I _knew_ that, but she kept saying she was okay so I just, leaned harder and harder on her…and then finally she called it. Said we were in a toxic relationship and that she was ending it. She was great about it, too! Said she still cared about me and wanted to be, to be friends someday. Just…without the emotions part. And like, I know she was right. She made the right choice. But, fuck, it hurt. Still hurts.” He sighed, looking wistful for a moment, then perked up again, smiling wryly, finding the humor in the situation.

“and now here we are, working on the same show, and it’s super fucking awkward.” He spread his hands into the universal ‘ta da!’ gesture.

Eliot was once again at a loss for words, but for a very different reason this time.

“Jesus, Q. I can’t believe you _work_ with her. I broke up with my ex like, three years ago, and every time he pops up in my facebook feed I still want to dig a fucking hole and die in it.”

Quentin shrugged. “Eh, it’s not like I see her every day, or really have to interact with her that often.”

“Says the man actively avoiding her.”

“Yeah, well…” he trailed off into silence, absentmindedly pushing his hair behind his ear. “She was right, though. We were locked in a vicious cycle. I’m a lot, um, well, less depressed now.” He looked at Eliot straight on, almost challenging him. “I’m not cured, or perfect, or anything, but I’m okay. And I think being in a relationship was fucking me up even more, I couldn’t tell where I stopped and the relationship started anymore. I needed to just…be by myself.  

Shit. Shit! Quentin didn’t want to be in a relationship right now? Is that what he was saying? If Eliot thought his brain been racing before, then this time he’d broken the fucking sound barrier. Dammit. What the fuck was he supposed to do with all his ridiculous daydreams now?

Quentin, completely oblivious to Eliot’s ongoing crisis, sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, I guess this was all for the best. I don’t even know if I was really in love with her. But, still, I think she probably broke my heart.”

THAT cut through Eliot’s panic. The genuine _pain_ and loss in Quentin’s voice—all too familiar to him—tugged at his heart and _God_ he just wanted to hug Quentin right now.

“It sucks that you had to go through that.” Eliot started. “I know how it feels. My ex broke up with me after telling me that I was ‘intense’ and ‘always too much’. Like, sorry for having fucking, _emotions_ , Mike.”

Quentin winced. “Jesus.”

Eliot sighed dramatically, flopping back against his seat. “You know what I think my problem is? I always ask people for advice but then I don’t actually want to listen to them, because all their advice is shitty.”

“Oh, wait, you’re right...”

“Hey!” Said Eliot, mock offended. “Are you calling me a narcissist?”

“…about me TOO, is what I was going to say, asshole!” Quentin tried to kick him but missed and hit the side of the bench instead. “Shit!”

“We really are…just two hot messes, aren’t we,” said Eliot, semi-amused, semi-awed. Partially it was the alcohol talking but also, it was nice to be friends with someone whose fucked-upness was compatible with his.

“Hey, you know what Josh asked me? When Alice and I broke up?” Quentin was sitting up straighter, his eyes full of mischief. “He asked if we broke up because I wasn’t a furry.”

Eliot, who had just taken a sip of his drink, literally did a spit-take. “I’m sorry- he fucking WHAT”

Quentin, his shoulders shaking with laughter, almost couldn’t string together a coherent sentence. “I know! Somehow, he’d, he’d gotten it into his head that Alice was, a, a furry! I think he was probably stoned when he asked me that.”

“Jesus Christ...Can you imagine, though? Alice showing up in, in, a fucking, _fursuit._ You know what they say…it’s always the quiet ones…” At this point Eliot had to stop talking, he was laughing so hard. Quentin was practically bent double and gasping for breath.

“Oh my God…that’s a terrible mental image. Jesus.”

Thankfully, at this point a slightly tipsy Margo walked over and stopped them from going any further with this line of inquiry.

Margo flopped over onto Eliot’s lap.  “Hey, what are you two assholes doing over here?”

“Nothing,” said Quentin, still wiping his eyes. “I’m gonna, uh, go to the bathroom.” Eliot watched him as he slid out of the booth and until he was out of sight.

“Well, look at that,” said Margo’s voice from somewhere around his navel. He looked down to see that she was wearing an uncomfortably perceptive expression.

“What?” Eliot said this as innocently as he could manage.

“Really, El. ‘fess up, I’d know that look anywhere. You like _like_ him, don’t you?”

“Jesus, what are we, twelve?”

“Hey, if the shoe fits…But seriously. What’s going on with you two?”

“Nothing,” he sighed dejectedly. “And I don’t think anything will happen. He basically just came out and said that he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with anyone right now, so.” Eliot blinked furiously a couple of times. He couldn’t believe he was getting so upset about a stupid crush. How had he let himself get so far?

A little hysterical, he finally burst out with: “Because, why would anything in my personal life ever actually, like, fucking work out!”

After letting him stew for what she considered an appropriate amount of time, Margo spoke.

 “I know your problems feel huge right now baby, but,” Margo placed her hand lightly on his cheek, “to me, my problems seem much worse.”

Eliot burst into laughter. “Gee, Bambi, thanks ever so for your sage advice.” He said it sarcastically, but actually? It was kind of comforting. It put things into perspective. “So, what are your horrible issues?”

“Well, for one thing, Todd won’t stop following me around like a fucking, fucking,” she waved her hands in the air, trying to come up with something cutting enough to properly describe the situation, “a goddamn, the walking human incarnation of food poisoning, is one.”

“Ah, yes, that little-known but deadly condition.”

“Shut up. Anyways, back to ME,”

The nice thing about Margo, Eliot decided as he listened to her rant, stroking her hair, was that she always knew when he needed her to take up the ridiculous melodramatic asshole shtick so he could take a break from it. A lasting friendship indeed.

*

Filming the season finale was, predictably, a nightmare. Eliot went in knowing he’d be working overtime since they were way over schedule and had to be done in two days. He expected extra-heightened levels of bullshit. What he did not expect was to get locked into the studio for thirty hours.

Somehow, every time it seemed like Ember and Umber were as awful as they could ever possibly be, they managed to reach new, greater heights of awfulness.

 

* * *

 

Shit really hit the fan around hour twenty, when Ember revealed his ‘master stroke.’

He clapped his hands together, jolting the half-asleep cast and crew out of their stupor. “Good news, everybody!”

“What, the UN finally processed my complaints about you violating the Geneva Conventions?” muttered Margo darkly.

“For this last scene, we’re going to have…a dance number!” Ember looked expectantly at the people around him with the air of someone who had announced that Christmas was coming early.

“Oh, Jesus,” groaned someone in the crowd.

“Look,” Kady raised her voice, “You don’t really need me for that, and I’ve done all my scenes, so can I just go?”

Ember scowled. This was clearly not going how he had planned. “I must say, I do not appreciate your attitude! This is something we’ve all been working very hard for and I’d thank you not to ruin it for everyone else. Even if you aren’t in the scene you need to be here for, for, moral support! In fact-” Ember beckoned Fray over, whispered something to her, and then shooed her away-“I have made the decision that no one is leaving here until we are all done!” Ember was really starting to pick up steam here, clearly about to go into one of his impassioned speeches.  “This is crucial bonding time, my friends! This is the fire that will forge our destiny, to join the stars, or crash and burn! This is a journey that no one person can undertake alone!” He paused for effect, staring grandly around at them.

“As my good friend Jim Henson once said…”

Eliot stopped listening as Ember blustered on for what seemed like hours. Finally:

“So I’ve locked the doors and no one can leave until we’re all done.”

It took a minute for everyone to figure out that Ember was done talking, and a few more to realize what he had just said. Obviously no one liked this plan, but the general state of confusion prevented them from putting on a unified resistance, and anyways at this point they were all just glad that Ember had shut up. Which was probably part of Ember’s plan, that evil, evil, little man.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere around the twenty-four-hour mark, when Ember and Umber got into a fight about the exact right angle to light the goddamn horse, everyone stopped even pretending to give a fuck. Instead they were sitting in a loose circle on the floor, passing around Eliot’s flask, because in their sleep-deprived state this had seemed the logical thing to do. They were barely bothering to hide what they were doing, but Ember and Umber were so deeply engrossed in their argument that they probably wouldn’t even have noticed if Josh pulled out a bong. Fogg obviously didn’t care, because he was stretched out in his chair, taking swigs out of his own flask.

Everybody was just so, so done. Poor Quentin, who had been caught in the crossfire, was locked in with them and was basically asleep on Eliot’s shoulder. Fen, Julia, and Kady were all curled up together; only Alice had managed to remain upright and even she was starting to slump. Eliot himself was half-sitting half-lying down against a wall and had spent a good chunk of the previous five minutes watching Quentin breathe in and out. Realizing what he had been doing, he mentally shook himself and re-focused just in time to hear Umber asking Penny to try changing position for about the eighth time in the last ten minutes.

“It’s the last time, really. I was wondering, though, could you try just, sort of, standing over here-“ he steered Penny to be right in front of Eliot- “And just, holding the camera up above your head—no, higher than that, higher, yes! Perfect. Could you try that?”

“How bout you try putting the camera up your ASS” muttered Penny, who was holding his camera straight up above his head.

On the other side of the room, Ember was coaching an increasingly furious Margo on how to properly act with a horse.

“You need to, hmm, you need to really” he waved his arms around, “really get in _touch_ with the horse. Remember, the horse is a blank canvas, onto which you will _project_ the drama of the scene- are you following me?”

“Oh, I’m following you, alright,” Margo ground out through gritted teeth.

“Good. Now I really want you to, to get to the emotional heart of the scene. Like this.” Ember turned to face the horse, put on a simpering face and clutched his hands above his heart, the very picture of constipation. “Oh, but Lord Star-Britches, if you cannot come to our aid with your stallion battalion, how can we ever defeat the terrible Floater horde?”

Eliot was unable to stop himself from breaking down into a half-concealed fit of giggles. Margo flipped him off with both hands from behind Ember’s back. Next to him, Alice held out her hand for the flask.

“I can’t believe I went to Juilliard for this.”

 

* * *

 

When they finally finished filming, Eliot almost missed it. He was basically asleep on his feet when Margo nudged him hard in the rubs.

“Ow! Bambi, what gives?”

“They finished filming, asshole.”

Eliot tried to make sense of this through his haze of exhaustion. “They finished…? OH. Can we leave now?!”

“Knew you’d get there eventually,” said Margo, patting him on the arm. “C’mon, let’s get the fuck out of here before Umber decides we need to reshoot the whole thing with a slightly different lens focus, or something.”

Eliot was so tired he got lost twice in his attempt to find the doors. Between that and realizing he had left his wallet somewhere in the bowels of costuming, he didn’t actually make it outside until late. Upon exiting, he realized the only person left was Quentin.

“Fuck,” said Eliot, gently swaying. “I don’t think I should be driving like this.”

Quentin raised an eyebrow at him, as if to say, “ya think?”

“I guess…I could get an uber? But then, my car’s still here, and I’ll have to come back to get it tomorrow…” Eliot was pretty sure there was a solution to this, but he was having a hard time figuring it out.

“Hey, I live pretty close by,” interrupted Quentin, “You could just come back to my apartment? And crash on my sofa?”

“Oh thank God,” breathed out Eliot in relief. “I was really afraid that I would be forced to take public transportation, like a _common_ person.”

“Oh, God forbid that happen.”

The walk back was short, and quiet. Eliot had lost all sense of time, but apparently it was night outside in the real world. Or maybe they were experiencing an eclipse, or possibly a catastrophic solar event. It’s not like he would have noticed, state that he was in.

Quentin didn’t even bother to turn the light on when they got to his apartment. He dropped his coat and bag, then went over and moved a bunch of junk off the couch and onto a nearby table. Apparently drained by this task, he immediately sat back down on the couch and closed his eyes. Eliot flopped down next to him, arm over his shoulder.

“I think I’ve been awake for so long that I no longer physically exist in this world. Like, I think my spirit has left my body.”

Quentin curled into Eliot’s side and groaned. “I’m so tired I don’t want to go to bed.”

“Sleep…what is this foreign concept you speak of.”

Eliot began gently running his hands through Quentin’s hair, and Quentin leaned into the touch like a cat.

“Hey, El?”

“Hmm?”

Quentin lifted his head, looking unsure, and then—

He was kissing Eliot.

It took Eliot a few seconds to figure out what was happening, but once he did, he kissed back enthusiastically. Kissing Quentin wasn’t perfect, but it was so, so good. It drowned out everything else, except one niggling worry. Reluctantly, Eliot pulled back.  

“Wait, wait, hang on, sorry, I just need to clarify something. Is this, like, a one-time thing? A friends-with-benefits deal?”

“Uhhhh, what? Is this…have you not been flirting with me for the past months?” God, they should not be doing this while essentially drunk on exhaustion.

“No no, I’m very much into this, but I thought you said you didn’t want a relationship right now? Just, to be clear.”

“What?”

“You know, that time when we were talking about Alice. You said you needed to be alone, that being in a relationship was bad for you,”

“What-? Eliot, I was trying to say, that, fucking, I was OVER Alice, and also very single. Also, that was, like, one sentence, a month and a half ago.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause as Eliot’s mind went into overdrive, mentally going through every second of that conversation. Had he really just fixated on that one sentence so much that he’d completely taken it out of context? Was he really that much of a goddamn fool?

Yes. He was.

 “So…” Quentin licked his lips nervously, “are you, do you, do you like, _like_ like me?”

“Am I surrounded by middle schoolers?” Eliot asked the air, bemused. “Yes, Quentin Coldwater, I _like_ like you.”

Quentin beamed. “Wanna know a secret? I _like_ like you too.”

Eliot was overcome with a rush of fondness for this idiot, and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead. They stayed like that for a long while, half asleep and cuddling, until:

“You know what—we can just share my bed. You’re too tall for this couch anyways.”

“Oh thank you,” groaned Eliot, who could already feel a crick in his neck forming. He followed Quentin back to his bedroom, running a hand through his hair.

“God, I can’t believe I’m so exhausted that we’re going to share a bed and I can’t even think about trying to seduce you.”

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunities in the future,” comforted Quentin, voice muffled as he changed his shirt. “Um, I probably have some stuff that’d fit you, if you want?”

Eliot appreciated the effort, but at this point the thought of changing clothes made him even more exhausted. Instead he just stripped to his underwear and face-planted into a pillow.

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” said Quentin dryly, from somewhere to Eliot’s left.

“Mmmffmfg,” said Eliot into the pillow. He felt a dip in the mattress as Quentin got into bed, and had to shift as Quentin awkwardly tried to maneuver the both of them under the covers. This was…a weird situation, to say the least. Was he supposed to act like this was purely platonic? Sure, they had just confirmed they had feelings for each other, but they hadn’t made anything _official_.

Eliot decided he was too tired for overthinking, and that also maybe he had learned his lesson about overthinking, so instead he rolled over and reached out to put his arm gently around Quentin’s waist. Q huffed in surprise, but then turned around to face Eliot, tucking himself up under his chin. Clearly Eliot wasn’t the only one desperate for a little physical intimacy.

Later, after sleeping for fifteen hours straight, they would get up and eat breakfast and figure out exactly how this was going to work. But for now, Eliot just listened to the sound of Quentin breathing and let himself drift off to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Epilogue

 

Somehow, by some miracle, it turned out that they had filmed a pretty good show. While Ember and Umber were god-sized pains in the ass, they actually did come out with a solid final project. Good enough, in fact, that they had been picked up for a second season. As Margo put it at unofficial after-the-wrap-party party:

“WE DID IT, BITCHES!!!” She popped a bottle of champagne that was _definitely_ not sold at this bar. “WE MADE IT THROUGH THE SEASON FINALE” She took a swig straight from the bottle, then held it up. “Here’s to another season of Hell!”

Eliot laughed along with everyone else, but the fact that Margo was genuinely happy didn’t escape him. In fact, even though it had kind of been a nightmare, he was looking forward to continuing with _House of Fillory_. Somehow, this ridiculous show had brought the people he loved most into his life. Plus, another season meant more opportunities to troll the hell out of Todd.

“Think you’re ready for another season of this?” Quentin leaned back onto Eliot, interrupting his train of thought. “Ember’s already making noises about you being possessed by some evil entity, you know.”

“Well, as long as I get to keep my spot as ‘sexiest cast member,’”

Quentin shifted to look up at Eliot, grinning. “I’ll put in a good word for you with the production design people.”

Eliot grinned back. “I knew dating you would be good for something.”

“Aw, fuck you.”

But he still leaned in for a kiss.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fandom has some of the best fic I've read but there is a sad lack of ridiculous bullshit, so I decided to be the change I wanted to see in the world.


End file.
